Field Notes From The Archive: Field Note No. 2

The Stories Books Tell

Jorden Sanders| Rutgers University | December 2023

How often do you think about the lives who have touched a book? We’re accustomed to thinking about the lives that books touch—the way their content moves hearts and changes minds unbounded by time—but do we consider how we interact with the material object itself? How many hands have held its weight or flipped through its pages? In a world where books are often imagined to be products of machine labor, purchased new, or read in digital formats, it is easy for the histories of the book itself to slip our minds. 

Doing descriptive bibliography in the Rare Book Room of the Schomburg reminded me in very tangible ways that books have lives, and the stories they tell actively shift how one approaches the words inside. 

My reminder began with the binding. 

Fig. 1. Photograph of Seattle-Maxwell Spine. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

Prepared to encounter a copy of The Wonderful Adventures of Mary Seacole, I was surprised to find the story bound with W.H. Maxwell’s Stories of the Peninsular; or, Peninsular Sketches (See Figure 1). It was not my first time encountering texts that had been bound together, but other texts I had seen were intentionally printed together in order to create a thematic reading experience. The title pages of these two texts show that the individual works were published in two separate shops on the same street. Because these texts were originally published and printed separately, the choice to bind these texts together rests with a reader—one who saw the value of packaging adventures together that lived experiences might have kept separate.

While a book like this told me the story of one reader’s trip down Paternoster row, other texts reminded me that each book actually tells the stories of many.

Figure 2. Photograph of the Memoirs of Eleanor Eldridge (1841) cover. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture.

This was the case when I opened the Schomburg’s copy of Memoirs of Eleanor Eldridge’s 1841 edition (See Figure 2). Rebound in a beautiful floral cover, the fraying edges and taped spine suggest that the book has been handled often. Attached to the front endpaper is a manila envelope stamped with the seal of the Lincoln School for Nurses in New York’s Alumnae Library (See Figure 3). Its placement across from a blank leasing log confirmed my suspicion that the envelope once housed the book’s borrowing history. According to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture’s records, The Lincoln School for Nurses certified 1,864 women between 1900 and 1961. One of which was Nella Larsen as part of the 1915 class (Hutchinson 88).


Figure 3. Photograph of Lincoln School for Nurses in New York’s Alumnae Library seal in Memoirs of Eleanor Eldridge (1841). Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. 

There is so much to learn from exploring who has handled the books we cherish. Who has held its weight and perused its pages? What does it mean for books to move among spaces of Black learning—particularly spaces dedicated for Black women? Now that I have handled these books as part of the Schomburg’s reading community, I can’t help but wonder what story the book will tell. 

Work Cited

“Biographical/Historical Information,” Lincoln School for Nurses collection, Sc MG 248, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library. New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts.

Hutchinson, George. “A Black Woman in White: New York, 1912-15.” In Search of Nella Larsen: A Biography of the Color Line, Belknap Press, 2006, pp. 75-89.

“Lincoln School for Nurses in New York’s Alumnae Library Seal, ” Memoirs of Eleanor Eldridge, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. 

Maxwell, W. H. Stories of the Peninsular War; or Peninsular Sketches. Charles H. Clarke, Copyright Edition, [year unknown].

“Memoirs of Eleanor Eldridge (1841) cover,” Memoirs of Eleanor Eldridge, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. 

Seacole, Mary. Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands. Edited by W.J.S., James Blackwood, 1857.

“Seacole-Maxwell Spine,” The Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands bound with Stories of the Peninsular War; or Peninsular Sketches, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library. 

This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 

This license enables reusers to copy and distribute the material in any medium or format in unadapted form only, for noncommercial purposes only, and only so long as attribution is given to the creator. 

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